The United States (US) is soon due to hand over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council (AC) to Finland. Thus far, the two-year US chairmanship has been successful, though it is important to learn how the Trump Administration views the future of Arctic engagement. This article explores some of the highlights of the US Arctic strategy and US achievements during the chairmanship of the AC.

The European Parliament’s new Arctic resolution on an integrated European Union policy for the Arctic was published on 16 March 2017. It is the EP’s fourth take on Arctic matters since its controversial position on Arctic governance back in 2008, and two follow-ups in 2011 and 2014. The document generally follows the lines drawn in previous EU Arctic policy statements: climate and environment, sustainability and regional development of the European Arctic.

Digitalisation is often approached as an uninterrogatable external force of nature which turns structures, practices and processes around. Those to excel in the turmoil are those willing to adapt to its conditions and requirements. What becomes forgotten, is that the appearance and outlook of digitalised societies is an outcome of manifaceted human policies, negotiations, bargaining and calculations.

In case you are planning to have an Arctic Council ministerial meeting, you need to secure room for eight ministers and their aides, permanent participants, all the observers and a huge hang-around crowd. It easily means several hundred people, with security screening to match the status of a superpower state secretary.
That is now, 20 years after the Council was inaugurated. In the beginning it was different.

The debate on Arctic economies has been dominated by large-scale resource extraction and trans-Arctic shipping. High resource prices and climate change impacts were expected to trigger Arctic economic boom. Hopes for regional development and concerns over environmental impacts were raised. By the mid-2010s, these notions are replaced by a more modest outlook, as the pace of developments – largely due to low resource prices – is slower than projected and various technical, economic and social constraints for extraction and shipping are better understood.